


Awkward Holiday Parties

by rachelisnotcool



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Hanukkah, also there's a wwii reference in here, i think it's cute, it's a holiday fic, so you have to read for that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 20:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2786945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachelisnotcool/pseuds/rachelisnotcool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny and Laura notice Kirsch's lack of Christmas spirit, so they decide to throw him a Christmas party. It doesn't go exactly as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awkward Holiday Parties

**Author's Note:**

> Probably don't quote me on the Hanukkah story if you're looking for a legitimate historian. Happy holidays!

 

*********

 

It's nearly 1 AM when Carmilla and Laura's cuddling session is interrupted by a knock at the door. Carmilla grumbles and disentangles herself from Laura’s arms, stomping towards the offending visitor.

 

When she opens it to see Danny Lawrence, She-Who-Knocks-At-Precisely-The-Wrong-Time, standing in the hallway tapping her foot impatiently, like she actually has a reason to be disrupting them at 1 AM, well, she’s filled with a familiar desire to throw Danny out a window.

 

“What?” she asks, leaning against the doorframe, obscuring Danny’s view of the room. Danny shifts uncomfortably, trying to look around her.

 

“I have to talk to Laura,” Danny says.

 

“And you couldn’t’ve picked, I don’t know, literally any other time for that?”

 

Danny doesn’t say anything, and Carmilla wonders if she’s trying to see into the room by pure force of will.

 

“Please,” she says finally. “It’s urgent.”

 

Carmilla snorts. “Really, Xena? Short of my mother being back...”

 

Danny shakes her head. “It’s not that. Now let me in.”

 

“Why should I--”

 

“Carm...” Laura says from inside the room, and Carmilla offers only token resistance as she slinks back into the room and collapses onto her bed, her arm over her eyes, pretending to try to sleep. Danny rolls her eyes and turns to Laura, who pats the end of her bed. Danny sits, still somewhat awkward, but determined to tell Laura what she came here to say.

 

“I think there’s something wrong with Kirsch,” Danny says, the words spilling out with almost no pause between. Laura seems to understand anyway, and Carmilla gives an annoyed sort of groan from the other side of the room.

 

“What?”

 

“Well, he’s just seemed... not like himself lately.”

 

“What’s he been doing?”

 

“It’s what he hasn’t been doing. It’s Christmas in a week, and he’s not excited at all!”

 

Carmilla snorts.

 

“Something to share with the class?” Danny snaps from Laura’s bed.

 

“I cannot believe you came here at 1 AM, interrupting...” Carmilla notices Laura’s glare, “...things just to tell us that your boyfriend isn’t excited for Christmas.”

 

“It’s important! It’s Kirsch! He’s excited for everything, and if he’s not excited for the jolliest time of the year, there’s something seriously wrong. And,” Danny adds, blushing crimson, “he’s not my boyfriend.”

 

“Mhmm,” says Carmilla, picking up a book from her bedside table, looking, somehow, both disinterested and smug at the same time.

 

“Anyway,” Laura says, glaring at Carmilla, “maybe he’s just had a bad experience with Christmas or something. Maybe it was Sarah Jane’s favourite holiday. Maybe he was ambushed by jellyfish. Maybe a werewolf bit him. Who knows?”

 

“You don’t get it!” Danny says, picking herself up off of Laura’s bed and pacing the room. “It’s Kirsch. He passes an English Lit test and throws a party in its honour. Don’t you remember? Bromer? Charles Dudekins? Broscar Wilde? So why doesn’t he care about Christmas? Something is wrong. I can feel it.”

 

“Have you tried actually talking to the beefcake about it?” Carmilla asks from her bed. “Maybe you’re just reading him wrong.”

 

“This is Kirsch,” Danny insists again. “And I love him, I do, we all love him to death, but he’s not really the master of subtlety, is he?”

 

“So what are you suggesting?” Laura asks, desperately trying to steer this conversation back on track before Carmilla and Danny end up at each other’s throats (again).

 

“I don’t know!” Danny says, throwing her hands up in the air and collapsing back onto Laura’s bed. She hits her head on the wall on the way down, and Carmilla gives a dry chuckle. Danny pretends not to notice and massages her head, thinking.

 

“I’ve got it,” she says, and from her tone, Laura is roughly 204% sure this is going to be a terrible idea.

 

“What?” she asks. Danny straightens and, with the singleminded certainty of a brilliant scientist convinced they’ve just found the solution to world hunger, begins to explain her plan.

By the end of Danny’s somewhat longwinded explanation, Laura is nodding along and Carmilla is still pretending to read, though Danny can’t remember her ever turning a page. Carmilla sighs like Czechoslovakia as it’s given over to Hitler by Britain and France; resigned to the fact that, ultimately, greater powers decide her fate. 

 

“Fine,” she grumbles, and Laura and Danny throw their plan into action.

 

*********

 

It’s late when Kirsch gets home from his tutoring session, and honestly, all he wants to do at this point is go to sleep. His tutor, though a total hottie, is fairly taciturn and punctuates her silence only with the occasional annoyed sigh followed by an eye roll. And he knows he’s not the best when it comes to English, but honestly, why sign up to teach if you don’t want to do it?

 

He’s still trying to wrap his mind around the finer points of Romanticism as he fumbles with the porch light at the Zeta house, trying and failing to flip the switch in the dark before giving up and looking for it by the light of his cell phone. He finally finds it a few minutes later, (It moves around a few times a week. Like everything at Silas, he’s learned by now not to question it) and throws open the door. The lights are all off, which is a little strange considering how much the Zetas are not known for, like, their balanced sleeping habits, but he shrugs it off.

 

At least, until the lights flip on and he almost has a heart attack. 

 

It looks like the Zeta living room has come off worse in a fight with a street light. Everything is green and red and glowing and headache inducing. In the middle of the room is a giant Christmas tree, surrounded by tables littered with Christmas cookies. The faces of everyone he’s ever met stare at him anxiously from behind furniture, and Danny and Laura are still hanging up a banner that says “Merry Kirschmas!”, looking at him guiltily. A black cat (that looks oddly familiar, somehow) blinks at him from the sofa, looking bored.

 

“Um,” he says, and he doesn’t have a chance to finish his sentence before Danny jumps to his side.

 

“So,” she says, “you didn’t really seem all that excited about Christmas, so we decided to throw you a party.” 

 

“Uh,” Kirsch starts.

 

“And we felt like you’d appreciate the pun, or maybe you wouldn’t, but we liked it so we decided to go with it,” Laura adds, popping up on Kirsch’s other side. 

 

“Right, but--” 

 

“And we weren’t really that sure about what kind of decorations you liked, so we decided to go with them all,” Danny explains brightly.

 

“Awesome, only--” 

 

“And we weren’t sure what was a good time for you, so we decided to surprise you,” Laura says. 

 

“Dude, thanks, only--”

 

“And we just wanted to make sure you were okay and cheer you up, because you’ve seemed really down, and no one should be down during Christmas.”

 

“I’m not down,” Kirsch says. “I’m Jewish.” 

 

There’s a moment of perfect silence while this sinks in.

 

“Oh,” Laura says, and Danny is silent. “Oh.” 

 

“Oh my God, Kirsch! I’m so sorry. I didn’t think,” Danny starts to say, but Kirsch cuts her off with a laugh.

 

“No, dude, it’s fine. Here, just let me light the candles and I’ll make you some Hanukkah stuff.”

 

“You don’t have to do that,” Danny starts, but again, Kirsch cuts her off. 

 

“No, man, are you kidding? You throw me this whole bash, I gotta at least give you some sufganiyot to take home.”

 

“Some... what?” Laura asks, and Danny glares at her.

 

“They’re, like, jelly donuts, man,” Kirsch says, and he leads them into the kitchen. 

 

Kirsch almost swears he sees the cat laughing.

 

*********

 

An hour and a half later, nearly everyone has left, and Danny, Kirsch, LaFontaine, Perry, and Carmilla (though Kirsch doesn’t recall seeing her earlier) are in the kitchen together.

 

Perry and LaFontaine are sitting together at the table, playing footsie and hoping nobody notices. Everybody else, who has, of course, noticed are ignoring them by the stove. Laura is sitting up on the counter, swinging her legs like a child.

 

“I’m really sorry,” Danny says for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time, Kirsch shrugs her off.

 

“You didn’t know,” he says, “and besides, I get to introduce you to all this cool Jewish stuff.”

 

Carmilla, who is standing opposite Laura, watching the candles burn, fights a smile. There’s a comfortable silence in which Laura looks at her knowingly. Carmilla feigns disdain again.

 

Kirsch pulls the latkes off of the stove, where they’re sitting in a boiling pool of oil. Danny glances at them. 

 

“So, what’s with all the oil, if that’s not a rude question?” she asks, and Kirsch smiles, stripping off his sweater.

 

“Well,” Kirsch says, “the Greeks used to rule part of the world, y’know? Including Israel. Except the Greeks were all pagan, and the Jews were like, “no, man. I’ve got my one God and that’s good with me.” But the Greeks were ruled by this guy named Antiochus, who was like, “nah, man. Not good with me. You convert or you die.” And like, the Jews were like, “no, dude, that’s so unfair,” but Antiochus was really stubborn about it, y’know? 

 

“So, like, his men were trying to force this one guy, Mattathias, to make a sacrifice to their gods, but Mattathias was all like, “nope” and he like, killed the guy who tried to make him do it. And his family all rose up with him, and they used all this, like, secret guerrilla warfare stuff and kicked the Greeks out of Jerusalem. But Mattathias died doing it, so his son, Judah, took over. And he was, like, crazy good at leading stuff. Super great general, totally great dude, I’m sure the hotties all loved him. You kinda remind me of him,” he says to Danny.

 

“Thanks,” Danny says.

 

“Anyway,” Kirsch says, determined to finish his story. “While Antiochus and his bros were in Jerusalem, they, like, completely sacked the Jewish temple. And everyone was all devastated, y’know, because they had this thing where the menorah in the temple always had to be lit, but there was no oil. None. And they looked everywhere, and eventually this one dude found a little bit of oil. But it looked like it’d burn for a day, tops. And it took eight days to make new oil. But they tried it anyway, and it burned for eight days. And that’s what the oil’s all about.”

 

Danny, who's become increasingly interested in what Kirsch is saying, finds herself nearly doing a faceplant into the sufganiyot. Only timely intervention from Kirsch saves her from getting a face full of jelly donuts.

 

“Thanks,” she says. 

 

“Don’t mention it,” he responds automatically. They stand there, smiling at each other, while Kirsch holds onto her arm. 

 

“Uh, Kirsch,” Laura says from the counter. “I think you should check on your food.”

 

“Yeah,” Kirsch says, and he flips a latke. He and Danny share a hesitant grin, and Carmilla and Laura share an eyeroll. “Yeah.”

 

*********

 

Finally, after what seems like ages, the latkes and sufganiyot are ready. By now it’s nearly 2 AM, but everyone is too content where they are to even think about going back to their own dorms. 

 

“It’s here,” Kirsch says, and he slams the plate down on the table, where LaFontaine and Perry have fallen asleep on each other. They jerk awake and share a guilty look. 

 

Laura, with some instruction from Kirsch, brings the plates to the table and gives one to each person. Everyone takes food onto their plate. Laura, Perry, LaFontaine, and Danny stare nervously at each other, but Carmilla’s already on her third latke. 

 

“What?” she demands, “I drink blood. Am I supposed to piss myself at a jelly donut now?”

 

Taking her cue, the others bite into their food and find that, to everyone’s surprise, Kirsch is an excellent cook. The latkes are cooked perfectly and taste mostly like potatoes, and hey, nobody’s ever upset to discover a new use for potatoes. 

 

It’s when they get to the sufganiyot that they run into a problem. Namely, that the jelly gets all over LaFontaine’s shirt, since they were asleep when Kirsch mentioned the whole “you can’t always tell by looking at them but they’re full of jelly” thing. They grumble halfheartedly, and Perry frets, dabbing at their shirt as they try to swat her away. The others laugh and talk until morning, when Danny and Kirsch somehow end up holding hands under the table, hoping nobody notices.

 

Everybody notices.


End file.
